160 THE UNIVERSITY 



or of the technical school? And if such problems can be isolated, 

 how do they differ, as " present " problems, from those that con- 

 fronted our ancestors or our immediate predecessors, or from those 

 that continue in existence as questions still unsolved? 



A starting-point for the response to these questions may perhaps 

 best be found in this simple fact: In every country of the civilized 

 world the institution which gives the most advanced instruction, 

 whatever form that may take except the exclusively practical, is 

 called a university. Such an institution may do this well or badly, 

 may do few or many other things besides giving this kind of in- 

 struction; but the feeling is universal that this kind of organization 

 does something which others are not expected to do, which in most 

 cases they cannot do. Unfortunately the converse is not univer- 

 sally true; in our own country scores of so-called universities are 

 no more than high schools, and poor ones at that; but in every 

 civilized land the highest level of educational achievement is reached 

 by a university. 



It is a commonplace that every institution, to be influential and 

 really profitable to the life of the nation as a whole, must be in 

 harmony with the national spirit and ideals. This would seem to 

 give us naturally as many types of universities as there are nations, 

 and to a limited extent this is true, though it has often been pointed 

 out that all the varieties are referable to two or three early forms. 

 The most intensively and exclusively national forms and tendencies 

 have their proper place in the schools; here if anywhere the seeds 

 of patriotism must be sown and character developed in accordance 

 with ancestral and national traditions. In the schools, therefore, 

 in the colleges, by whatever name we choose to call the institutions 

 whose pupils are expected merely to acquire knowledge and to de- 

 velop character, we expect to find the greatest diversity in the 

 practices and interests of different nations. Each people must here 

 work out its own salvation, with an eye to its own profit; it should 

 learn what it can from the experience and example of others, but its 

 responsibility begins and ends with itself so far as the mere trans- 

 mission of acquired knowledge is concerned. But when we pass on 

 to the actual increase of human knowledge and to the training of the 

 maturer minds to take their part in thus pushing out the bound- 

 aries of the known, we necessarily overstep the limits of the 

 national, and enter upon ground common to all the nations of the 

 earth. Here the interests of civilized nations can only coincide, 

 and on this ground must meet the institutions which in each country, 

 whether organized especially to this end or not, carry on this work 

 as far as it is carried on at all. These are, preeminently, the uni- 

 versities. They may be of one form or another, with simple or 

 complicated aims; but this responsibility is theirs, this duty and 



